Obituaries

Korbin Liu, 63; Expert On Long-Term Care

Korbin Liu, 63, a health policy research associate at the Urban Institute for more than two decades, died Aug. 12 of esophageal cancer at Washington Home hospice. He lived in Washington.

Dr. Liu was a nationally recognized expert on health care after acute hospitalizations and on Medicare and Medicaid coverage.

His work focused on long-term-care services, and he studied the likelihood of patients' entering nursing homes, the duration of their stays and their risks of depleting personal resources and becoming eligible for Medicaid coverage.

At the time of his death, he was working on a multiyear study to examine approaches to improving Medicare payments for skilled nursing facilities.

Dr. Liu was born in Foochow, China. He came to Washington in 1947, joining his parents, who had arrived the previous year. His father was a naval attache at the Chinese Embassy.

He graduated from Woodrow Wilson Senior High School and received a bachelor's degree in biology from Amherst College and a doctorate in population sciences from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1976.

Before joining the Urban Institute, he worked for the Health Care Financing Administration, now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Public Health Service.

Survivors include his wife of 28 years, Barbara Rose Marzetta Liu of Washington; three daughters, Katharine Korbin Liu of Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, Kimberly Anna Liu of Cambridge, Mass., and Meredith Lara Liu of Boston; and his mother, Tung-Sen Chen Liu of Washington.